Re: SEUL: Partitioning

[Thomas Molesworth <thomas@bass.almac.co.uk>]

On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Randy Heineke wrote:

> The idea of putting Linux in a loopback partition has a potential
> attractive property for some of the less adventurous computer users.

Agreed.

> Consider a user who is unfamiliar with Linux is leary of it but would
> still like to try it.  Now the user puts the SEUL diskette in the
> drive and reboots or type A:install or something like that.  The user
> answers some questions and Linux installs.  The user is invited to test
> drive some applications.  Before an hour is up the user is undecided
> whether to keep Linux.  The user sees how the next installation will be
> so easy, that erasing Linux, is hardly an issue.  Since it is all in the 
> one dos file it is a simple matter to eliminate it.

I know that we aren't supposed to know what a SEUL-CD is at this stage, but
if the base SEUL filesystem is in a file on CD, it could be copied to the
DOS drive (if a user cannot do this, then they should not be attempting to
run Linux, IMHO, although a setup program could be provided). This means
that the generic Linux system is installed before Linux is even booted,
which _removes_ the need for boot+root disks (something which I would love
to see, although Debian is supposed to boot from CD). Once Linux has been
booted from this file, all the optional components can be installed.

> It may sounds nuts to say that easy removal of Linux is a attractive
> feature of SEUL.  But the thought of trying to clean up your disk
> drive after things go bad is a real barrier.

Exactly! It's a nightmare trying to patch partitions back together
sometimes.

--
Thomas Molesworth            (thomas@bass.almac.co.uk)

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